Ashes

While my sister was here visiting we decided to spread my Dad's ashes. His mom is buried in Shelton Washington and never had a tombstone, so us kids decided to pay for a tombstone and add my Dad's name to the bottom with the idea that his ashes would rest there was well. It was a strange trip.....not quite sure how I feel about it. It was a bit emotional when we left because it was like the final good bye......I think. I miss him. My kids miss him. I hope that he is enjoying his time with his Mom right now. She died when he was only 13 yrs. old and when he talked about her you could tell that he really loved her.

Here's a pic of the tombstone


















Yeah, well my husband and sister didn't think the ashes should be clumped up like they were so they tried to spread them out more. DISGUSTING!



















The kids didn't really understand anything about the ashes. They thought we were just there to see where Grandpa was "buried".

Visitors

My sister and her family came to visit at the beginning of the month. She has four boys and the youngest is Jaed's age, but my girls get so excited to see them every time we get together. The boys love chasing my girls around and tickling them which puts them at the top of the "Favorite Cousin" list. Here's a couple of pics from their visit:

Here's Brett holding Zoey. They loved to carry her around!
























This is Adam holding Zoey. He just graduated from High School and is off to BYU Idaho this fall!





















I went out to go to the bathroom at about 2:00 a.m. one night and this is what I saw. Kai did not start out on the couch with Brett but at some point during the night she climbed up there and snuggled right in!

Interview with my kids

I saw the following questions on a friends blog or facebook (I can't remember) and thought it would be cute to ask my kids the same questions. Here's their answers......

1. What is something mom always says to you?
Jaed: "No"
Josie: "Enough"
Indi: "I love you"
Kai: "Don't go in the kitchen"

2. What makes mom happy?
Jaed: Sewing
Josie: When I'm doing the right thing
Indi: Doing good things and doing what is right
Kai: When I tickle her


3. What makes mom sad?
Jaed: When she wants a hug but no one gives her one
Josie: When I'm doing the wrong thing
Indi: When we don't do what is right
Kai: When I don't give her kisses


4. How does your mom make you laugh?
Jaed: Tickles me
Josie: By telling funny jokes
Indi: Tickling me
Kai: tickling me


5. What was your mom like as a child?
Jaed: She looked like a boy
Josie: She was like me
Indi: Blonde hair and shiny eyes
Kai: she was little

6. How old is your mom?
Jaed: 33
Josie: 48
Indi: 36
Kai: 5


7. How tall is your mom?
Jaed: 6 feet
Josie: 8 feet
Indi: 10 feet
Kai:This tall (showing me with her hands...about 2 feet tall)


8. What is her favorite thing to do?
Jaed: Sewing
Josie: Sew
Indi: Sewing
Kai: Build clothes


9. What does your mom do when you're not around?
Jaed: Play Left for Dead with Dad
Josie: Makes lollipops
Indi: Sewing
Kai: Play


10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
Jaed: Cookcing
Josie: Making suckers
Indi: Sewing
Kai: I don't know


11. What is your mom really good at?
Jaed: Cooking
Josie: Exercising (hehehe, only if...)
Indi: Cooking
Kai: playing the computer


12. What is your mom not very good at?
Jaed: Playing video games
Josie: playing some games. She never wins at some of the games we play.
Indi: teaching (hmmm....well that sucks since I'm homeschooling them!)
Kai: not taking things from me


13. What does your mom do for a job?
Jaed: She doesn't have a job
Josie: Work on the computer (hehe, yeah I surf...that's about it!)
Indi: Work at the Children's Museum (I volunteer there once a week!)
Kai: Working in the kitchen


14.What is your mom's favorite food?
Jaed: Chocolate
Josie: Cereal
Indi: Spagetti
Kai: Crabby Patties

15.What makes you proud of your mom?
Jaed: She loves me
Josie: She does nice things for me
Indi: Making clothes
Kai: she's my mom


16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?
Jaed: A Queen
Josie: A Queen
Indi: A Princess
Kai: SpongeBob

17. What do you and your mom do together?
Jaed: Play Counter-Strike together
Josie: Bake cookies
Indi: Play games
Kai: Go places

18. How are you and your mom the same?
Jaed: We both like the color Red
Josie: We both have lips
Indi: We both have blond hair
Kai: we eat food


19. How are you and your mom different?
Jaed: Different color hair
Josie: She has glasses and I don't
Indi: She has long hair and I have short hair now
Kai: different voices


20. How do you know your mom loves you?
Jaed: Because she's my mom and I'm her kid
Josie: Because she always tells me
Indi: Because she always kisses me and hugs me
Kai: she tells me


21. What does your mom like most about your dad?
Jaed: He loves me
Josie: His beard
Indi: that he takes care of us and her when she's sick
Kai: that he doesn't touch her stuff


22. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?
Jaed: to the store
Josie: Shopping
Indi: to the store
Kai: to the store

Big Brother

Our little town has a great Farmer's Market that we frequent often. Jaed decided to be the stroller pusher this particular Saturday and did a great job. No one was injured and no one jumped out of the way of the stroller, so life was good! Please note Jaed's great hair-do. I have FOUR girls to get ready for the day which includes hair and cute outfits. You would think that Thayne would take some pride in his only son and do something to spruce him up! If I didn't say anything, Jaed would probably wear the same clothes (underwear and all) for the whole week. Thayne promises me that he was the same way when he was Jaed's age so I do have some hope for him! Good thing he's a great big brother (even the best teaser around!) and loves his sisters!

Choir

Josie and Indi have been participating in a community children's choir all year and have really enjoyed it. They are constantly singing around the house even more than they use to (iif that's possible) and have learned tons of new songs. Here are some pictures of their performance!


(I think Indi is a born performer! She swayed her hips to almost every song and was so dang cute!!)


















(Josie loved ALL the attention she got while performing! I think she was more excited that she was in the spotlight than she was about singing!)


















This was their last performance of the year. They performed the same night as four other choir groups. I'm so proud of them for doing a great job!



















We bought flowers for the girls to give to their Choir Director. She had a lot of patience for the kids and did a great job teaching them all the new songs!

Great Purchase

About six years ago we purchased a inflatable castle you can jump in and we think it's one of our best purchases for the kids. It such a special treat to get it out and they can play in it for a long time.
Here's some pictures of the kids playing on it the last time we got it out.


The two half-naked girls are Zoey and Kaia. They would rather run around in a diaper and panties then put clothes on and sometimes it's not worth the fight!





















































Zoey was getting bounced around way too much at one point so she sat in the middle and cried.























Josie saw me pull out the camera and made sure I got a picture of her!

Glasses

Indiya got a Doctor's Kit for Christmas this last year and we couldn't find the glasses to the kit for a long time. Well, we decided to clean under the couches and guess what Zoey found?? She absolutely LOVES to wear the glasses around and we can't help but laugh every time we see her in them! I don't think Indiya will ever get her glasses back. She'll have to be a Doctor without the glasses!

Doesn't Care

As Kaia gets older I realize what a special little girl she is. She reminds me so much of Josie. She is in her own little world and not very in tune with what is going on around her most of the time. She likes to play in the same room that Thayne and I are in even if there are no toys around. Yesterday, I was folding laundry in the front room and she came and played house with the socks in the sock basket. The biggest sock was Dad and the smallest sock was Zoey. Those socks had great conversations with each other and I even saw them hug each other a couple of times! Kaia is very sensitive sometimes. If one of her sisters is mean to her by not letting her play with them she melts to the ground sobbing. Her sense of humor is priceless. We can play jokes on her and laugh with her about almost anything. She really does bring so much happiness to our family!!

We went to Indiya's Kindergarten graduation and Kaia was insistent in wearing these socks. I even found the match to one of them but she preferred to wear them mismatched. This totally fits her personality!

Start em' young!

We are all fans of SpongeBob, here at our house. Even Zoey loves the little yellow guy! When the introduction of the show starts, she starts babbling like she's singing along with it. You put her in front of the show and she'll stay there for quite some time! Kaia and Zoey get along the best when spongebob is on because they are both glued to the T.V. and leave each other alone! I'd like to be one of those great parents that say that they limit how much their kids watch and agree with all of the "too much t.v." crap, but I'm not! We all love the yellow sponge and his star friend and chuckle right along with the kids while it's on!

Dear So and So....

Dear Old Lady in the hospital room next to mine:

I'm sorry that no one came to your room every time you yelled out that you needed help, but asking them to put you in a hotel room instead of a hospital room probably didn't win you any points. I'm so grateful that the narcotics I was on, knocked me out because I don't know if I could have slept with your constant yelling.

Sincerely,

The Lady in the room next to you who ate too many cherries.

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Dear Treadmill:

The constant stares have got to stop. I know you are there and I know you are needing to be used but I don't appreciate the nagging feeling you give me. I'm going to make it a goal to give you some exercise this next week so I hope this means you'll leave me alone!

Sincerely,

The Mom who has great goals but sucks at accomplishing them

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Dear Jaed:

When I ask you to clean the front room do you think you could avoid stuffing things under and behind the couch? When the couch can't rest on the floor because there is so much crap underneath it, we have a problem. Or when we sit down on the couch and hear a huge "CRUNCH" because a toy was smashed. I'm sure I never did that as a child and can't imagine where you inherited such a behavior (said with extreme sarcasim) but it needs to stop, please!

Sincerely,

Your Mom

Expensive bag of cherries

I was at the grocery store a couple of days a go and saw that they had cherries on sale. So I bought some and throughout the day I munched on them. I have to say that I was feeling pretty proud of myself for picking a healthy snack to munch on. Well by the end of the day I had eaten about half the bag of cherries and at about 9:00 p.m. I started to have a horrible stomach and back ache. I tried everything to get rid of the pain but by 1:30 in the morning I couldn't handle it any more so I drove myself to the hospital. I was rushed to get a CT scan and they found a blockage in my abdomen. I was admitted and told that I would be going into surgery soon.

I was scared to death!! I was alone, cuz Thayne needed to stay home with the kids, and I was told I was gonna be cut into...and I was on Narcotics to boot. Well, I finally met the surgeon at about 10:00 a.m., and he told me that he wasn't certain that surgery would be needed and that we would wait and see if my body could work the blockage out. What a relief! After lots of narcotics (cuz the narcotics relaxes your body they were hoping that it would relax my stomach enough to remove the blockage) my stomach stopped hurting and I was feeling a lot better. I was given something to drink (hot chocolate!!!) and if I didn't throw that up then I was gonna be ok. No throw up bag was needed so no surgery was scheduled!!!! They kept me until about 5:30 p.m. the next day for observation and then I got to go home.

The blockage was caused by the freakin' cherries. I can't digest certain skins on food and had no idea that cherries was one of those foods. So the bag of cherries cost me about $2 and well, we don't' have health insurance so I will be paying for the ER visit as well as one day in the hospital....hmm...so I'm guessing that the bag o' cherries are gonna end up costing me several thousand dollars! YIPPEEE!!!

Cynical

I found this quote on a random blog I was looking at:

Dirty Dishes
Thank Heaven for Dirty Dishes
They have a tale to tell,
While other folks go hungry,
We are eating very well.
With home and health and
Happiness,
We shouldn't want to fuss,
By this stack of evidence
God's very good to us.

I never thought of myself as cynical but I must be. I seriously rolled my eyes at this quote. Don't get me wrong, I do feel very blessed for the food we have in our home, and I certainly do pray for those that are in need, but I certainly don't feel those blessed feelings when I stare at my sink full of dishes. When I look at the mess that I have to clean I think, "HERE I GO AGAIN!".

No more Craft Room

Josie, Indi and Kai were all sharing a room and when it came time to clean it I was breaking up more cat fights then I ever have. I'm talking real cat fights. Pulling hair, wrestling each other to the ground, pinching, etc.. I really think the instigator was Josie. She absolutely hates to clean other peoples messes and if her mess is combined with another person's mess then it's all THEIR mess not hers. So, after me dragging my feet, whining and throwing my own personal fits I buckled under the pressure and gave up my craft room. Ok, it wasn't that bad, but I really was sad to give it up but felt like it was necessary the happiness of my girls. We moved Josie into my craft room and she LOVES it. She cleans her room without being told. She organizes her toys, shoes and books and even makes her bed. She's always the first one to be done when it's room cleaning time and enjoys her own time watching her favorite show or playing by herself.

The cat fights did stop, but the other room still isn't getting very clean. Indi tries very hard to stay focused on cleaning but Kaia is the wayward girl. She says she's going to help and then starts playing and tries to persuade Indi to play with her, and Indi caves in. Even when the cat fights were happening there was some cleaning go on between break outs. What to do, what to do? At some point we need a house big enough so everyone can have their own room......I know....dream on!

As far as my craft space goes, our master bedroom is very large so I have staked out a corner and am quite happy with the set up. Thayne and I can count the time we spend in the room together (him on the computer and me at my craft desk) as quality time together now, right?

Dear So and So

I'm gonna start a new tradition on my blog. Every Thursday I will be posting little notes to people (or things) that I have come across during the week.


Dear Policeman that pulled me over,

I am so grateful that you didn't give me a ticket for speeding. I did deserve it and was ready to accept my fate but was thrilled that you didn't pass me a piece of paper through the window. I hope it had nothing to do with the fact that I know your wife and frequently purchase things from her home business. My kids went on and on about how "naughty" I was for speeding, that I'm beginning to think that their harassment was worse than a ticket would have been.

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Dear Cashier at our local grocery store,

Would it seriously kill you to be nice? Is your life so bad that you have to make others lives suck while they go threw your line? And, why do you have to be the only cashier available when I am in the store? Next time I'm going to wait in another line even if it takes me twice as long as it would have if I'd just picked your register.

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Dear Doctor,

THANK YOU so much for pulling the rotted piece of cloth out of Josie's nose. She has had HORRIBLE bad breath for over a year now and we had no idea why. Now that the rotted cloth is out of her nose (and we have no idea how it go there) we can cuddle up with her with out hesitation and not turn our heads when she is close to us. Josie has even commented on how well she can breathe and smell things now. It's like a whole new world for her.

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Unexpected

We've been in Washington for nine months and we really love this state. I can't say that I'm sold on the small town we live in but maybe it'll grow on me. So, my husband's boss decided (a couple of months ago) that he wanted to stop taking new clients which meant that my husband was without a job. Thayne was more upset that he wasn't upset. His boss was a very hard man to work with. I really think his boss was bipolar because his mood swings were ridiculous. So, here we are in a small town in Washington with no job and not sure what is around the corner. Two months after Thayne was laid off, his boss fell off a cliff and died. Two days before he died, a job Thayne had applied for called his boss for a reference......good timing??? His boss called Thayne after he received the call and told Thayne that he gave him a glowing reference....we still haven't heard about the job yet.

We went to law school so Thayne could be in a stable career....hmmm......."WHAT THE HELL" is the only thing I can think of saying. I really try to look on the bright side and count my blessings but that gets old really fast.

On a different note, our homeschool year is wrapping up and a nice summer break is something we're all looking forward too. Jaed and Josie did great this year. They were tested a couple of weeks ago and both received average or above average marks. Josie has excelled the most. She was so behind in school when I pulled her out but now she has surpassed my expectations. We have decided to keep them all (including Indiya) home next year for another year of homeschooling. I still don't know if it will be a forever thing. I'm just taking one year at a time.

Kaia is FINALLY potty trained. She turned 3 in Feb. but didn't potty train until March but she was my easiest to train. She decided on her own that wearing Dora panties was better than wearing a diaper, so there was no turning back after that.

Zoey...wow......she is a wild child. I think she is our new "Devil's Child!". She gets into everything, throws a fit about everything, and hits and swats at everyone. She doesn't cuddle very often, wants to eat all the time and refuses to eat anything that comes from anyones hand but hers. Her joy in life is SpongeBob!

Josie's Bday

I completely forgot to post pictures of Josie's 7th Birthday. She had a little party at my mom's house when we were visiting there. She invited her cousins and two friends that she had when we were staying there before moving to Washington. She was certainly the Queen for the day. She loved ALL of the attention she got and ALL of her presents. Her favorite thing was not having to do any chores (a tradition in our family) on her special day!

Josie getting her gift from Indiya and Kaia























Josie and her cousin Paige!
























Josie and her cousin, Haley (Paige's twin sister)!
























Josie and her cousins Brayden and Kassi!


















All of the party goers! The two girls on the end are Allison and Lily!

Doctor Visit

I took Zoey and Indi to the Dr. because Zoey has been sick for a couple of weeks now and just isnt' getting any better and Indi....well that's a story all by itself.

Since Indi was little (around 2) we've noticed that she gets fixated on something and obsess over it. You have to be very careful what you say to her because she can make it into something huge and obsess over it as well. For example, when I got my Cricut machine we sat the kids down and told them to never touch it because it was expensive and could hurt them really bad if they got their fingers stuck in it. Well, Indi thought that meant that the machine was a death trap. Everytime I brought the machine out to use it, Indi would run in another room or get upset and tell me I shouldn't use it because it will hurt me. No matter what we told her all she remembered is that the machine could hurt you.

Thayne and I have been wondering if she has OCD, so when I took Zoey in to the Dr.'s office I brought Indi with me. After explaining our concerns to the Dr. about Indi, she immediately diagnosed Indi with OCD. She told me that it wasn't an extreme case so she would not recommend any medication for it but did want to prescribe counseling for her so that it didn't get out of hand. Thank goodness there is a great child psychologist in our little town so we won't have to drive far for her to see someone.

Good Day

It was a uneventful day to day. I don't have a lot of these kinds of days so I try and appreciate them when I do. Jaed and Josie even got their chores done without being asked which is AMAZING! Kai didn't make any major messes for me to clean up, and the fighting among them was minimal! WHAT A GREAT DAY!

Zoey has been sick for over two weeks now so I guess I better call the Doctor. Her symptons are nothing major (runny nose, cranky, etc.) so I kept holding out that it was a virus and would go away but it doesn't seem to be doing that. She absolutely hates Doctors and it is quite a scene everytime we go, so if I can avoid it I do. And, because I homeschool, I always have to take my herd of children with me which is also a scene. javascript:void(0)

Oh, Kai!

I have given Kai three chores to do everyday: pick up the books, pick up the shoes and pick up the coats. If you ask her what her chores are she will tell you. If you ask her where the stuff goes after she picks it up she will tell you. So what's the problem? Well, we had a cleaning party this weekend and Kai was up to her old tricks again. I found shoes in the food pantry, I found the books in my room behind the door and Thayne and I caught her trying to shove a coat under the couch! What the heck? We laugh about it because she's only 2 (almost 3) but I think this is going to be a big problem as she gets older. If you try and talk to her about it she just laughs and says, "How you find it, Momma?". Here are some other things we've found in the food pantry that we KNOW she put there:

--dirty diapers (the garbage is next to the pantry)
--toys (you have to leave the toy room to get to the pantry)
--dirty clothes
--dirty dishes

If you really get after her and she cries it's as if you've killed her. She takes FOREVER to stop crying and then she comes up to you and says, "You cuddle me, Momma?". Well of course I"m going to and then it's as if whatever she was punished for never happened. What do I do with this girl?

Handmade Dresses

I took the plunge into sewing and decided to make my girls Christmas dresses. I found a way cute pattern (thanks Laura) and put my own little touch to it and viola! I am very proud of them and tell my girls over and over to make sure and tell everyone that their mother made them! It didn't take me as long as I thought it would and I am in love with them (oh, and my girls as well!). I used six different colored fabrics in each dress and there is elastic in the neck, arms, and waste along with three little pinwheels on the front. The only thing I'm sad about is that they are Christmas dresses and can't be worn all year round. I guess that should give me motivation to make more dresses for them!